stephanie8bb: Making Money With Options

The power of hands-on learning is indisputable. But when it comes to investing your money in the stock market, however, making a beginner’s mistake can cost you more than just your self-esteem. Thankfully, the web makes it easy to practice with virtual money.

There are a multitude of online investment games like Investopedia and gnuTrade that play with virtual money, but not all of them are easy for beginners. Here are five of the best free (because you shouldn’t have to spend real money to play with fake money) online games for getting your feet wet.

1. Wall Street Survivor

Invest $100,000 in virtual cash via drop-down menu choices. A friendly cartoon version of stock guru Mark Brookshire helps you make your final decision by providing some rating numbers when you input a stock. These include a rating for survivor sentiment, fundamentals, technical and a Motley Fool class='blippr-nobr'>Ratingclass="blippr-nobr">Rating.

For additional help choosing stocks, the site has an impressive resource library that spans beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. Start with Investing 101 and consider taking advantage of the community forums if you have specific questions. Those who need a little help getting started can also choose to adapt one of the preset portfolios created by proven traders.

While the $100,000 competition is most popular, anybody on the site can create a contest. Prizes vary, but most often consist of competitive pride.

2. HowTheMarketWorks

Owned by the same company as Wall Street Survivor, this game is great for investors looking to gain experience with a new type of portfolio. In addition to stocks and indexes, there are options to experiment with Forex portfolios, penny stocks, mutual funds and short selling.

Beginners can execute market order-based trades in a “fun mode” without worrying about things like set hours, maximum number of trades per day, per stock and order expiration. A “realistic mode” amps up the complexity after they’ve mastered the beginner level.

Players can manage up to three stock portfolios and three Forex portfolios on the site at once. For each portfolio, they select a starting value between $100 and $500,000 and set how much virtual commission you are charged per trade.

The competition aspect is optional. General monthly contests give each player $25,000 as a virtual starting point. Other public contests include challenging restrictions like “short sells only” or “penny stocks only.” Users can create their own password-protected games as well, which is a feature that teachers find helpful for creating class competitions.

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

Young Money Magazine’s stock exchange game is easy to learn but also fairly realistic, which is a hard balance to strike.

Realistic aspects include a virtual commission that’s taken out of each trade, adhering to market hours and rules about how you can invest. Unlike many investing games, trades are made at a real-time price. Learning aspects include convenient help icons on key terms and an intuitive tabbed interface.

The site runs a monthly contest with a $100 (real) cash prize that goes to whoever gained the highest percentage. Players can also create their own contests or join other user-made contests.

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

MarketWatch will run this mock stock market contest for a total of four weeks, awarding the winner of each week with an iPad. It’s on week three right now, but there’s still time to get in on the competition for week four.

You must have your selections picked before the week starts on Monday. The shares that you select are “purchased” at Monday’s open and will “sell” automatically at Friday’s close.

The catch is that all players can only use the 15 to 20 symbols selected for each week. The companies are selected by the game owner for companies that are projecting their earnings during each week. Lining up picks is easy — players simply drag the company’s logo to their trading card and designate if they want to sell short or go long.

Although there are some pros playing, this game is especially manageable for beginners due to the limited stock options for each week.

5. UpDown

Like Young Money’s game, UpDown has helpful icons that explain key terms for beginners. More comprehensive resources in the education center mercifully cover even the most basic of investing concepts.

Community features, like the opportunity to collaborate with a group and to see the most-bought and most-sold stocks, are also helpful for beginners. The “watch list” tool provides a convenient dashboard for monitoring potential picks.

UpDown sponsors a monthly contest that rewards players who beat the market with real cash.

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In my mind, Google TV is about the most interesting product idea in recent gadget history. It’s poised, ready, not to disrupt the TV industry, but rather provide consumers true on-demand options with no extra work on the networks’ part. There’s nothing particularly novel about Google TV, but the whole concept is wrapped up as such a nice package that’s it’s hard not to like it — that is, if you can look past the first generation jitters. The platform isn’t particularly ready for general consumption just yet as it seems it fell victim Google’s “release early, release often” mantra. But it’s only going to get better with each release.

I spent some time this afternoon talking to Google TV’s product managers, Salahuddin Choudhary, about what’s wrong with the platform today and where it’s going. Let’s just say my interest was restored. Google TV will live up to its potential.

John and I worked on several of CrunchGear’s Google TV posts together as we both have units installed at our homes. We both noted that the Chrome browser seems stripped down, almost unusable for general web browsing. This was by design. Apparently Google found from various focus groups that people preferred the full-screen experience rather than having a browser on their HDTV that showed the URL bar, tabs, and all the rest standard on a desktop browser. The primary purpose of Google TV’s browser is to watch videos, not peruse Facebook or Amazon. This might change, though.

Salahuddin commented that they are working on making “the core browser tools more accessible.” after I droned on and on about how it’s a missed opportunity to at least not have those user elements be optional. I wasn’t the only one that had a hard time finding the URL bar. (it doubles as the search bar) They seem to understand user experience is key but I’m not sure it’s a top priority like it should be, a criticism that applies to the Android Marketplace as well.

I stated in our review that Google TV seems half-baked. That’s particularly true when it’s noted that apps won’t hit the system until 2011. But sometime next year, the entire Android Marketplace will appear on Google TV. Yeah, all the apps are coming to the Google TV platform: Angry Birds, Google Earth, Robo Defense. They’re committed, for better or worse, to support the entire back catalog. If you thought an iPhone app looks horrible upscaled to 2x on the iPad, just wait until the Android port hits your 50-inch LCD.

Of course I was assured that they are working on the scaling and they might look fine, but smartphone apps are fundamentally different than Google TV apps. I’m expecting a lot of disappointed GTV owners once the Android Marketplace hits the platform and they install their favorite Android smartphone apps.

But there’s going to be another sort of Android app. One designed just for Google TV and a “full range of developers” are already on board. The few apps of Pandora, NBA Gametime, Netflix are really just a proof of concept. They were included to show what Google TV could do, but I would argue that they added to the half-baked taste. Besides Netflix and Pandora, the rest are officially meh.

We talked briefly about the content provider’s stance and blocking of Google TV, but there was no hint of concern or worry like I expected. Google TV is looked upon internally as a product that works with cable, not against it. Video web portals like Hulu are just one source of content for Google TV. It also links up with Amazon VOD and Netflix, which, while they’re pay sites, do offer a fairly extensive library of content that’s free from ads. “It’s up the networks,” Salahuddin said when asked about the blocking situation.

While writing our comprehensive Google TV review, I couldn’t help but feel that the system could be a game-changer, but only if given enough time. I worried that Google wouldn’t give the platform time to mature, but those fears were somewhat subdued knowing that Sony dumped a good deal of money into developing and marketing two major products. They would keep Google on track, I thought. But after talking to Salahuddin, I feel my original fears were unfounded. Google is in this for the long haul. Google TV will be given the time it needs to grow into a consumer platform.

Oh, and my final question of “Is Google TV coming to the PS3?” was met with a surprised chuckle and quick “no comment.” So yeah, Google TV is coming to the PS3. Somehow. Maybe. I really don’t know.

Revisions: Inserted the proper name of the product manager.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Making Money With Options

1. Wall Street Survivor

2. HowTheMarketWorks

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

5. UpDown

More Business Resources from Mashable:

For more Business coverage:

1. Wall Street Survivor

2. HowTheMarketWorks

3. Young Money Stock Market Game

4. MarketWatch Fantasy Earnings Trader Game

5. UpDown

More Business Resources from Mashable:

For more Business coverage:

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